Real Madrid: The Team I Love

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Many Americans may find this hard to believe, but soccer (called football everywhere not the USA) is the most popular sport in the world. People in the US think the Super Bowl has the largest TV viewing audience of any sporting event (except maybe the Olympics) but the 100 million or so who watch it pales in comparison to the 700 million or so who watch the World Cup of Soccer finals. One of the most popular teams in the world, at least in terms of how many fans they have, is Real Madrid.

Real Madrid is one of the three best football — soccer — teams in the world. The team was founded 115 years ago in 1902 as Madrid Football Club. They are known as the Blancos (Whites), Vikingos (Vikings) and Merengues (Meringues). Real Madrid has one of the biggest fan bases in the world. On social media alone they have over 100 million followers. As for TV viewership, they dominate Spanish League TV — they even have their own TV channel! Only FC Barcelona comes close to being watched on TV as much. In its home town of Madrid, the team plays its matches in the 81,454-capacity Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, which is one of the ten largest football stadiums in the world. The stadium was built in 1947 and is located in downtown Madrid and it used to hold 100,000 when it first opened in 1947. It is smaller now because they have created more expensive “VIP” sections which cost a lot more money than a regular seat, but it is still sold out almost every match.

Image courtesy of Real Madrid FC

The best clubs tend to also be rich and Real Madrid was the richest club in the world before Manchester United overtook them a few years back. A lot of that has to do with merchandising. Real Madrid has traditionally worn a white home kit (uniform) since inception. The white kit is the home jersey,and purple kit is the away jersey for when they play in some other team’s stadium. Their shirts sales alone — not including other merchandise — is one million euros a year (which is about $1,000,000 dollars). Last year, they sold approximately 2,290,000 shirts, with Cristiano Ronaldo’s jersey being their top seller. Their sponsors are Adidas — who pay £34m (nearly $50 million dollars) a year, Fly Emirates — who pay £20m a year (nearly $30 million dollars) and they have more sponsorship deals than just those two. All of this makes them one of the richest clubs in all of the sporting world, not just football (soccer).

No matter how rich a club is, they don’t get that way, or stay that way, unless they win. Real Madrid is not only a unique club with a lot of history, but they are the most successful football team in the world, having won 63 trophies. The most sought after title, European “Champions League” title, they have won 11 times, more than any other club in history. In order to qualify for the Champions League, a team has to finish in the top three of their league — although it used to be only the teams that won their league. Real Madrid have won the most La Liga (Spain’s top football division) titles in history — 32. They have also won several cup titles and even the Super League Cup title.

I became a fan of Real Madrid back in the beginning of middle school. I started liking them because of Cristiano Ronaldo, who joined them on July 9, 2009 and is still playing with them. He is one of the top players in the world and has been voted FIFA’s Player of the Year four times (only Messi has more with 5) . I would watch every game. I’d wake up really early just to watch them. I’d wake up around 6, just depends when their games start. This is how I become a Real Madrid fan. I still watch a lot of their games today, even though I am in high school and my life is busier. No matter how old I get, I am sure I will always managed to watch the “El Classico” every year, which is when they play their arch-rival, Barcelona.

It had every piece of information that you would like to hear about if you are really into sports considering im a big Real Madrid fan as well I learned that the stadium used to be bigger back then then what it really is to this day. I liked that the author was very into Real Madrid and I think theflappyfalcon should have more articles on soccer.

I like how you showed a lot of Real Madrid history into the stadium and etc . I learned that Real Madrid has one of the biggest fan bases in the world . One thing you should of added would be the players who where and are legends of the club .